making sense of the senseless

Get a Clean Facebook Page URL

I am starting to gather things together that I need for this new feed feature on the websites. I know some of you don’t use Facebook for your accounts, but some of you do. Even if you don’t this is good information for the future if you do decide to use Facebook. It is also helpful for me because when I am setting up these feeds I need your Facebook page names. Currently in our database I see only 6 campuses that have Facebook accounts. All of them except for Tooele have simple URL names.

You can see these simple URL names by visiting the RCDE Facebook page at facebook.com/USURCDE or facebook.com/tooele.usu. These names are easy to remember and write and they also clearly identify the ids to me when using them for this new feed feature. I suggest getting a simple URL even if you aren’t going to use the feed feature because it is just good practice. Plus, it’s free and only takes a few seconds. If you are not in control of your Facebook page, tell whoever is in charge to read the instructions in this post to get a nice simple URL. Other wise you will have a long URL for example like Brigham City’s:

The top part might or might not say Your username is already set. This part is strictly for your personal account and has nothing to do with fan pages. When Facebook switched some stuff a while back, most people made a simple URL for their personal accounts. If you have not yet, you can make one, but that is beside the point. The bottom portion should look how it looks on this screen if you are an admin on the Facebook Page for your campus.

If your campus page name is not already in the drop down menu, select it from the drop down menu. Then in the box on the right, enter the desired username for the fan page. This will be the username you can direct people to, and the username I will use to access your feed. Your simple URL will then be: http://www.facebook.com/%5Busername%5D. I don’t care what your username is, but I suggest you make it as short, simple, and sweet as you can. I would imagine USU[CAMPUSNAME] would be available in most cases, but maybe not. It would be awesome to have all uniform names like: facebook.com/USUMOAB, facebook.com/USUKAYSVILLE, etc. Again, up to you. The username isn’t case sensitive, but whatever case you use will show up that was in the URL.

facebook.com/usurcde and facebook.com/USURCDE both point to our Facebook page, but once you are there it is displayed as facebook.com/USURCDE

Once you select a username for your fan page you will see this prompt:

Please Read: You CANNOT change this once set

Probably the MOST important thing here is that once you set a username for your Facebook page, it can never be changed after that. It’s literally set in stone. Ok, well not literally. So pick a good one. I always suggest short, easy to remember names. USU[CAMPUSNAME] is my favorite. These names must be at least 5 characters long and can only contain letters, numbers and periods(.). If all went well you will get this confirmation box after hitting the confirm button:

Success!

You can then immediately start using this new page name anywhere you want. The last step would be to login to the CMS and update your campus location information on the Location Manager page. Once you do that you are set to go. All old links to the Facebook page will automatically forward to this new page.

If you are using Facebook on the new Feed

The last step that you need to do if you want to use Facebook on your new feed is simply add me as an admin on your Facebook account. I don’t need it for posting purposes, but I just need to link my personal Facebook app that pulls this feed information down and allows me to access it. There may be another way if you do not have access to the Facebook page and if whoever does doesn’t want me to be an admin. I don’t see why that would be a problem, but I understand if it is. If it is a problem I can try to work out an alternative method, but this would be easiest.

In order to make someone an admin just log into your Facebook account and go to the main Admin Panel on your pages main page. It should look like this. I have just recently “Liked” your pages, so I should be near the top. Either way click on “See All” next to “New Likes.”

Click on the "See All" link

After you click on that link a window should pop up showing all the people that have liked your page. Find my name and click on “Make Admin.” I should prompty be added as an admin and can then access your Facebook feed from our web server and then use that data in generating a news feed.